Ellet Vaughan: Response to La Jetee

Experimental film always resonates a weird undertone in my bones, a unnerving feeling that weirdness is about to insinuate. La Jetee broke my proverbial experimental film “cherry”. Expecting the seventies on a filmstrip, the emulsion and explosion of color, sound, and thoughts on film; all the while me deeply in thought, straining my small brain around these grotesquely beautiful visions. Yet to my surprise, La Jetee, was not quite the overwhelming whale of a feat I thought it to be. It actually reminded me of most of the films I currently watch.

I don’t pretend to understand anything about film analysis or history of film for that matter, but I would safely presume that the usage of stationary imagery in films was outdated quite some time ago. But in La Jetee it doesn’t take away from the films creditability or aesthetics, it actually creates a melancholy feeling or a feeling of retractedness from emotions. A woman’s face, an image shown again and again, each time a long pause on that stilled image, letting the viewer gather a memory for her, which is ironic, because of the protagonist’s current situation. A timeless state in his life, where experiments performed on him by the scientists in this futuristic setting allow him to travel through time to view this woman. A paradox of ideas, a plethora of confusing thoughts dwindle throughout this film. The one thing that is simple, and yet the greatest importance in my opinion has to be the imagery.

Besides imagery, what lurks under the surface of this film, suggested ideas in the compilation DVD were the traces to Hitchcock’s Vertigo, I, although think Hitchcock to be overrated, and widely overanalyzed; so I won’t delve into the recurrent ideas in Marker’s film, plus that’s to easy.

To view your own death, but not to understand it. Deep stuff, for a lack of better words. The protagonist refers to this moment in his life as something that affected him significantly, but just how significant he couldn’t fathom, he was more focused on, and I hate to refer to it again, the woman’s face. The focus on his own death was minimal, he dies. While a great deal of the film’s focus is on the woman, which I will try to get away from. The beginning for example, did Marker try to implement a focus on present? Because there was no insinuation that time had actually changed from the current, should the viewer always assume that the time of a film in which they are viewing is relatively close to their own, or is that selfish, and inattentive? But his death occurs in the current at the station, and in the beginning of the film. While we, the viewers assume this death that is viewed by a child version of the protagonist is just an unfortunate casualty seen. Once again the influence greatest is the fleeting imagery, it might be a minimal focus, but it was a great event, therefore the importance must be highest.

Sticking with the time theme, does the protagonist actually time travel, is he actually a capture or is he mentally a capture of his own creation. Were the experiments fictional, did they actually enable him to travel to the future, and past? Or was he suffering so much pain that he simply came to this elaborate idea himself, the mind can only withstand so much pain, then it simply cracks or gives in. Schizophrenics go through the same paranoia, they see hallucinations that aren’t there, hear voices and sounds that do not exist, a complete world within their very own skull we do not see or grasp, but is completely real to each individual that has the experience. No I am not suggesting the protagonist is schizophrenic, but maybe I will suggest that the idea of time travel is a tad far fetched, even for an experimental film. Again I have no prior knowledge of experimental film, and consider myself sub par for a film viewer in this area, but I will be bold and express my own opinion. But then we run into the problem of his death, he recalls it to us in the beginning; he has seen it before, and in the present. Not much that can be explained, rather contradicted or argumentative even if he did travel into the future and or past he saw his own death in the present time, at or and one time. How can this thing be explained? Was he actually a small child watching his own death? Did we see the small child, see the man being shot? I present the idea, what if he actually is playing the vision of his own death in his head, as another concoction he made himself along with the time traveling paradox. Or he could also already be dead, and so overcome with the weight of this idea, he is created all of these visions and thoughts to be replayed continuously for himself, as if reliving life.

In a conclusion, well the purpose of a conclusion is to reiterate the main point of the paper, but what was the main point of an analysis? Is there a main point to an analysis of film, or is it all opinionated. Luckily, it is opinionated, so even if I totally missed the mark, couldn’t grasp whatsoever any intellectual insight into La Jetee/Sans Soleil, I can always say, “at least fulfilled the writing requirement”. Even if the paper is late, do to illness I point out, bronchitis, which I’ve somehow managed to get twice in my life, lucky me. Back to the point again, I deviate, again asking myself, did I fufill the requirement presented.